Emotional Activation: An odd little skill I've been meaning to teach for a while.

So, for a very long time now I've had the skill to control my emotions. It's not as perfectly developed as it perhaps could be -- alas, I fell out of practice a long time ago -- but I think it may be worth picking up, especially for those with an interest in the human brain.

Now, don't let the first paragraph give you wrong idea, what a lot of people might mean when they talk about controlling their emotions is emotional supression. That is, disregarding your emotions and being calm and rational. That's not what this is. Instead, what I intend to teach is about emotional activation, In essence, consciously deciding to feel something on your time and terms.

Is it useful? It truly depends on if you can see a use for it. If you need to be happy or at peace for a moment at the drop of a hat it works pretty well though.

In any event the core of this skill is the idea that your mind and your sensations are a muscles, just as much as your bicep or your calves. And with training you can consciously move them in the exact same way.

Alright, so actually talking about the process of learning this skill:

The very first thing you need, is a strong and clear emotion, and you need to analyze it and remember it carefully. Are you happy, sad, guilty, frightened, betrayed, at peace? Think of how the emotion physically feels, is your heart weighed down in your chest, is there a sharp pain, are you light and buoyant, is everything inside your head hollow, perhaps still and relaxed?

From my own experiences, I found that a strong negative emotion is easiest to replicate first but that is simply because they are clearer to me. The core requirement is that you have a clear and distinct idea of how the emotion in question feels.

Once you have that in mind, try and move your body into the physical state you felt, much as you would strike a pose. Your heart dropping in guilt, recoiling in shame, or the inner edges of your skull --- just above your brow and ears --- raised in happiness. If it works, you should feel the barest ghost of that strong emotion.

Once you've done that, see if you can run the full gamut of emotions based on their sensations. Again, the first time, the recreations will all be pretty weak.

Once you've done that, I recommend you find a place and a time to practice habitually: If you walk, run, bus, or carpool anywhere on a regular basis see if you can make a daily habit of practicing during the free mental time those activities offer you.

From my own personal experience, it should take several months of daily practice until your emotions are as strong as they are normally. As I mentioned at the beginning, your emotions are muscles and it takes exercise before you are able to flex those emotional muscles as strongly as they reflexively activate.

Once you've got it down, it should be a matter of thought in order to feel whatever you wish. Of course, emotions you haven't trained will probably not respond as you wish without practice.

As a final note: there are other things at the end of this road: Once you can consciously activate your emotions, you can start to control physical sensation as well. Personally, I never progressed beyond a tingling in my fingertips or a sensation heat and cold in my hands, but that's very much for lack of trying. Once again, it's all about finding a time and a place to examine and replicate the sensations.

Anecdotes from a Bhuddist monk I had the pleasure of studying meditation under a while back say that if you wanted to, say, feel like you had a tail, you could probably do that.

 

Hm, I sort of did that for an assignment once? We had to read a 30-second nonsense paragraph with as much [emotion of ur choice] as possible. So for "fear" i tensed my shoulders up like I tend to do when I'm around halloween decorations. IIRC it worked pretty well! And it's definitely easier to sound happy/upbeat if I make sure my eyes are open and my eyebrows are raised like I'm actually interested in something. Sounds cool.

 

Right, so it's been a while, but I guess now is fine to respond. :V

Yeah, I'd say the primary difference is that instead of external movement, this manipulates internal sensation.

---------------------------------------------------

My real reason for update however, is that it's come to my attention that there's another little mental trick, which may or may not build of the first, (which is to say, I really don't know if you could just up and use this, or if you'd have to train it) that folks may find useful. At it's heart, it's a certain way of pinging one's subconscious for answers. It's not an flawless tool, but I find it's a good way to get a read on thoughts and feelings that I have a hard time pinning down.

The actual trick is very simple. One imagines a dial in one's head with an answer to the left, an answer to the right, and an arrow that can fall anywhere between either. Then you ask your question. If it works, the dial should fall towards one answer, though depending on... factors, it may not fall all the way.

It doesn't have to be a two answer dial of course. I've used a 3 point circle for some questions, and it wouldn't surprise me if someone with a more vivid imagination than mine were able to summon their own inner ouija board. (Though this may be more useful to the sort who's mind is a quiet place of vague impressions and barely realized things.)

Now, it's not a good way to get concrete facts, like "is this because of this," but you can use it to find out the ins and out of your own head. I've always found "what's my gender?" to be not only one of the first question I asked myself, but also a good way to check calibration.

On an entirely separate note, it's worth checking back on some questions. Me being... me, I've found that some answers can change day to day, or even minute to minute. Likewise, if you get an answer you don't expect or want to dig deeper into, you can very well play twenty questions to find the root of things. Though it's worth noting, this checks your mind as it is in the moment. Spend some time thinking through your feelings and they can change. But like I said, this is for the what's not the whys. The feelings, not the facts.

 

Hmm. Good suggestions. (Though many people might not find "what's my gender?" to be a good way of checking calibration :P)

 

Huh. I think I've always been able to this? I remember making myself feel specific emotions in front of a mirror so I could see what facial expression would go with it. I find it very easy to feel a specific emotion at command most of the time. Is this... not normal?

 

Well I don't think I've seen other people talk about it much but then I'm just one person and have no idea what goes on in other people's heads so it wouldn't surprise me one way or the other. Seeing as other sensory stuff seems more difficult to manage, it wouldn't surprise me if the whole emotional activation training is tapping into preexisting functionality that just doesn't always come online. Or vice versa, that that function of the brain is just an emergent possibility, but a few individuals just grow up with all the components fit together that way from the start. Biology is weird and messy after all.